Everything has a context or contexts. Context influences our understanding of that thing, person, action, or text. So, if you want to understand something, one of your most important tasks is to understand its context(s).
Let’s start with you, the reader. Suppose you want to understand yourself, who you are, why you act as you do, what you believe and why, and so on. What is that self you are trying to understand? The author Jose Ortega y Gasset suggested that part of that answer must be an account of our circumstances, our living, breathing context: “I am I plus my circumstances” (Meditations on Quixote). The African-American essayist James Baldwin made the same point, directing us to our multiple contexts and leaving open-ended what else one needs to consider: “I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am, also, much more than that. So are we all.” (James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son, xx (2012)) If these authors are right, the “you” that you need to examine includes at least the intellectual, social, political, and cultural contexts in which you find yourself.
In Chapter 8 of Reading I discussed five types of context that add meaning to an argumentative text. One general lesson from that chapter is that the more you know about the context(s) of a text, the richer the meaning of that text will be for you, the greater your understanding of what the author is trying to communicate to you. So, how do you know what the contexts of any text is?
Knowing and recognizing context is not like learning a reading skill like outlining or summarizing. Indeed, it presents a sort of chicken and egg problem (which came first, the chicken or the egg?). The more you know about science, history, and general aspects of a culture, the more you will recognize the relevant contexts of a text; conversely, the more meaning you get from any particular text because you recognize its relevant contexts will give you greater knowledge of science, history, and so on to aid you in understanding other texts. Indeed, some commentators have argued that without some background knowledge of history, culture, science, etc., reading comprehension is impossible or nearly so. (See, e.g., Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap (New York: Avery/Penguin 2019))
This is not a reason to be discouraged. Knowledge begets knowledge and you have to start wherever you are.
One obvious lesson from this is to learn everything you reasonably can. A less obvious lesson is that reading deeply in a subject matter that interests you is a good way to improve your reading skills. Especially if you are struggling in your reading, find a book in an area that interests you, at a reading level you can manage, and begin reading. It can be a book about soccer, Hip-Hop, cooking, the origins of the stars, automotive mechanics, the history of the U.S. Civil War, whatever. Your background knowledge of the subject matter of the book will aid you in understanding it. Once you’ve mastered it, move on to another (not necessarily more difficult) text in the same subject matter. Repeat as often as is useful and then branch out to texts in other areas in which you are interested. You will be amazed at how much you can teach yourself and how much your reading will improve.
The more you know, the more you will appreciate your life. To take a trivial example, consider this old and well-trod joke:
A priest, a minister, and a lawyer were trapped on an island surrounded by sharks many miles from the mainland. They waited for days to be rescued, but no one came for them. Finally, in desperation, they agreed that one of them had to try to swim to the mainland to get help. No one volunteered for the task because they feared they would be eaten by the sharks. So they decided to draw lots to decide who would make the swim. The lawyer lost the draw, said his goodbyes to the priest and minister, jumped into the water and began to swim. Surprisingly, when he got near the sharks, they formed two parallel lines and allowed him to swim through this lane unmolested. The priest shouted with joy, “It’s a miracle. Thank God.” The minister replied, “No, father, just professional courtesy.”
If you don’t know the social or cultural context it assumes, you won’t “get” the joke and won’t find it funny. If you do know the assumed context, you likely won’t bend over in riotous laughter (it’s not that funny), but you are likely to appreciate it and at least get a chuckle from it.
A post-script: go back to my post of March 10, 2022. Its title was “Analytic Tools: Swords or Plowshares?” Did you catch the Biblical reference? (See Joel 3:10) Does knowing that reference and the common modern turn of phrase based on it add any meaning to that post?
Reading Argumentative Texts 